


Little by Little

by tinydooms



Category: The Mummy (1999), The Mummy Series
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, First Times, Friendship, Gallipoli Campaign, Gen, Grief, Loss, Mother-Son Relationship, PTSD, References to Abuse, Religion, Spanish flu, Travel, World War One, family love, major depictions of war, world building
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:40:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24649612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinydooms/pseuds/tinydooms
Summary: Rick O'Connell became who he was slowly, and then all at once.
Comments: 60
Kudos: 48





	1. Part One: Childhood

**Little by Little**

_Part One: Childhood_

_Chicago, 1897_

Richard’s father is a big man, tall and handsome and strapping. By day he works at a Chicago steel factory, making the bones of buildings that touch the sky. By night he drinks on the stoop with the other men in their tenement. Sometimes he chases Richard’s mama around and around and around. Richard is three, and thinks they are playing, and laughs. 

(They are not playing.)

“You do love me, don’t you, Joe?”

“Oh Margaret, I live with you, don’t I?”

One day, Richard’s father does not come home from work. He doesn’t come home the next day, or the next day, or the next. Richard’s mama cries, but not for very long. 

_Chicago, 1897-1901_

Richard’s mama buys a black dress and a cheap gold ring and moves them to the other side of the city. She calls herself “Mrs. O’Connell” and works as a cook in a restaurant, making meals for working folks. Richard stays all day with the old lady who looks after the little kids in their building while their parents are at work. As time goes on and he gets bigger, Richard goes wandering with the bigger boys. But he’s always home in their single room when his mama gets home from work. They eat leftovers from the restaurant and Margaret tells him about the people she saw, the snippets of conversation she overheard. Then she puts Richard to bed and reads to him from one of their library books, _Treasure Island_ or _Around the World in Eighty Days_ or _Robinson Crusoe_ , until she has to leave for her typing class. 

“Things’ll get better, sweetheart,” Margaret says, tucking Richard in and kissing him goodnight. “One day we’ll go on a real adventure.”

And Richard falls asleep dreaming about hot air balloons and endless deserts and flying carpets and magic. 

_Chicago, 1902_

Margaret O’Connell passes her typing course and takes a series of secretarial positions. At some of them she has to be “Miss” O’Connell and warns Richard to call her Auntie Margaret when they are out together, “so that we won’t get in trouble”. Richard is eight and beginning to understand how unfair his mama’s life is. When she loses her third job in a row, he sits on her lap and hugs her while she tries not to cry. 

“Did they fire you because they heard me call you ‘mom’?” he asks. 

“No, sweetheart,” Margaret says wearily, “It’s because they found out I wasn’t married to your father.” She wraps her arms around her boy and kisses his head. “I don’t care, because he gave me you. But promise me--swear it--that you won’t knock a girl up and then refuse to marry her. Promise me you will be a better man than that.”

“I promise,” Richard says, and though he still doesn’t quite understand what she means, he knows that his father abandoned them and resolves never to do that to anyone.

_Chicago, 1904_

By the time Richard is ten, life is beginning to “even out”, as Margaret says. They have just enough money to live on each month, enough food to eat, and they keep their clothes neat and tidy. Margaret teaches Richard to mend seams and sew on buttons and polish shoes; she instills in him a life-long sense that clothes are to be looked after, that how a person looks and dresses is a mark of their respectability. Each day Margaret goes to her job in the typing pool at one of Chicago’s big offices and Richard goes to school. He does errands for the neighborhood grocer afterwards, and works weekends as a bootboy at the corner drugstore. Each penny earned is carefully recorded in Margaret’s account book, another lesson that will follow Richard through life. There are no frivolities for the O’Connells, but there are occasional small luxuries: the nice washing powder that doesn’t make their clothes itch, Pears soap to bathe with, cream for Margaret’s face. On birthdays and holidays they eat out at diners, and on Sundays they attend free concerts in the park, or visit a museum to see the fine art. The room they share is full of library books and magazines that Richard rescues from the trash. He cuts out pictures and pins them to the wall so that the room looks real pretty. Once or twice a year they even attend a vaudeville show. It is the two of them against the world, and though they are poor, they have each other and are happy.

Still, when he turns ten, Richard offers to leave school and get a job in one of Chicago’s many factories. He could change bobbins or climb into big machines to make repairs or shuck oysters. 

“Absolutely not,” Margaret says. “No, Richard, you’re staying in school.”

“But I can help!” Richard protests. “Lots of kids work in factories!”

But Margaret won’t hear of it.

For Christmas that year Richard works extra shifts at the drugstore, restocking the shelves and sweeping up after hours. He uses the extra wages to buy Margaret a rouge compact locket on a chain. The compact is tiny, about the size of a half dollar, and the rouge inside is a pale peach color; the lid is black with a tiny embossed flower and looks real pretty. Richard wants his mother to have pretty things; she deserves it. On Christmas morning he gives it to her wrapped up in a bit of paper. Margaret puts the powder on her cheeks and the necklace around her neck, and hugs her boy to her. 

She wears the necklace every day for the rest of her life. 

_Chicago 1905_

One ice cold midwinter day, Margaret O’Connell leaves Richard bundled in blankets before the radiator and goes down to interview for a secretarial position at the Episcopal mission office. Richard wonders if she is going to have to go back to being “Auntie Margaret”. He hates that people treat his mother like dirt just because she wasn’t married to his father. He hates that they have to lie to survive. He wonders if this will be the kind of job where Margaret has to be at the beck and call of fat rich men who won’t pay her enough and will fire her if they find out she has a kid, or if she’ll be the widowed Mrs. O’Connell and respectable. 

But Margaret comes home, elated, with an entirely different kind of job. She pulls Richard out of his blankets and dances him around the room.

“I’m working for a real lady,” she says. “She runs the Episcopal mission and corresponds with people all over the world. I told them about you, too, Richard, and they want to hire you on to run errands after school.”

And they’re both so happy and relieved that they put on their coats and go out to a diner for dinner to celebrate. 

_Chicago 1905_

This is the best job Margaret has ever had. Mr. and Mrs. Cartmel organize donations for the mission home in Cairo, Egypt, which is all the way across the ocean on the eastern edge of Africa. Richard knows about Egypt from church; it’s where Joseph was sold into slavery and where he saved his family, and where Pharaoh’s daughter raised Moses as her own son and he later freed the Hebrew slaves. 

“Who’s the pharaoh now?” he asks, and Mr. Cartmel explains that Egypt is now a British protectorate and there aren’t any pharaohs. He says that there is another religion, called Islam, that most Egyptians practice, which startles Richard. He hadn’t been aware that there was any religion but the Christianity he was raised with. 

“Oh yes, there are many religions,” Mr. Cartmel assures him. “But there is only One True God. Our work is to bring as many people as possible to His light.”

Richard considers this. Certainly the mission has brought light to his and Margaret’s lives. For the first time ever Margaret is earning enough money that they can put a little aside each month. They take a two-room apartment in a nicer building; Richard sleeps in his own bed for the first time in his life. (He doesn’t like being alone.) Margaret buys them both new shoes and nice new coats. Richard can even buy newspapers the day they come out, instead of waiting to read yesterday’s news after it had been discarded in the wastebaskets outside his drugstore. He can buy chocolate bars and chewing gum for the first time in his life. If this is what Mr. Cartmel means by bringing God’s light to people, Richard is fine with that. 

But the Cartmels don’t just want to sit in Chicago and raise money for the Egyptian mission. They want to _go_ there. One day, eight months after she starts working for them, they ask Margaret into their office. Richard waits outside, biting his nails, praying that she isn’t about to be fired. 

Margaret isn’t fired. She comes out of the office with a small smile lighting her face, and takes Richard out to a diner for dinner that night, because she has big news. 

“Mr. and Mrs. Cartmel are going to spend a year in Egypt,” she says over fried chicken and mashed potatoes. “They’ve asked if we would like to go with them. They say I’m the best secretary they’ve ever had and that they can’t do this without me.”

Richard’s whole soul leaps in excitement. “We’re going to go to Egypt?” he cries. 

There aren’t many bags to pack; the O’Connells have never had much. They return all of their library books and pack up their bedding and linens and kitchen supplies to store at the mission office until they get back. They have a suitcase each when they board the train at Chicago’s Central Station with the Cartmels, bound for New York City, then Portugal, then Egypt. 

The journey takes three weeks and is the best adventure Richard has ever had. He and Margaret share a second class sleeper compartment all the way to New York. They spend part of every day in the lounge car, watching the United States steam past. Richard has a book to read--Mrs. Cartmel gave him a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories before they left Chicago--and there are lessons in Arabic with Mr. Cartmel, but Richard prefers to watch the people and the countryside they pass by. It is the first time he has ever been outside of Chicago. 

New York is a chaos of buildings and people; it reminds Richard of Chicago and he is not at all afraid. They spend the night in a hotel near the docks and board the ship the next morning.

Shipboard life is new and exciting; there are games to play on deck, and a library, and three free meals a day. Richard roams as much of the ship as he can--as a second class passenger, there is hardly anywhere he can’t go--and makes friends with the stewards and stewardesses. It’s all so different from home. Margaret encourages his curiosity. 

“Didn’t I always say we’d go on an adventure one day?” she says. “We’re like Phileas Fogg and Passepartout.”

Richard giggles. “We have to find Aouda, though. And it would be nice to win a lot of money.”

Margaret laughs. “Haven’t I taught you not to gamble? But we have had some luck, haven’t we? We’ve been good and won ourselves a wonderful new life.”

_Cairo 1906-1907_

Their new life in Egypt really _is_ wonderful. The Cartmels move into the mission home in Cairo, and the O’Connells settle into their neat three-room apartment nearby. It is fully furnished with beds, couches, tables and chairs, and Mrs. Cartmel and Margaret go into the souk to buy household linens and things. Egypt is loud and dirty and fascinating; it smells of frying food and strong coffee and animals. Richard loves it. He loves the men in their long jalabiyas and the women in their black robes and hijabs. He loves the markets and the ancient buildings and the muezzins calling the faithful to prayer. He loves the Pyramids and the tombs and the ancient artifacts in the Museum of Antiquities. He loves the Nile and how old it is, and marvels that there have been people here since God invented people.

Margaret, too, loves Egypt. Whenever they have free time, she and Richard explore the city, taking with them one of the men from the mission home as a guide. There is so much to see! The Cartmels take them up and down Egypt, both by train and by boat, visiting as many missionaries and churches as they can, spreading the good word. It is a tightly knit community of European and American and Egyptian Christians, and a happy one. These are good people, Margaret reminds Richard--not that she needs to. They have enough to eat, and a nice place to live, and they get to see Egypt! Life is wonderful for Richard and Margaret. 

And then it all falls apart. 

_Cairo, 1907_

Nobody knows who or what brought the sickness to the mission home. One day everyone was fine and healthy, and the next…

“Influenza,” the doctor says grimly, and prescribes medicines and remedies, and quarantine.

It seems to Richard as though everyone but himself and Margaret is sick. The missionaries are sick, and the native staff, and then Mr. Cartmel gets sick, and then Mrs. Cartmel. Every day is a nightmare as the illness ravages the compound. Mr. Cartmel dies. Shortly after, so does his wife. Several of the native staff die, and then more of the missionaries. 

And then Margaret gets sick. 

They try to keep Richard away from his mother’s sickbed, but at thirteen his lankiness has resolved itself into height and strength, and they cannot keep him from Margaret’s side. Day after day Richard nurses his mother, trying to get her to drink tea and broth, fanning her when she sweats from the fever, tucking blankets around her when she shivers. He has never seen his mother so sick and so small. 

“Come on, Mama,” he says, falling, in his fear, back into his baby name for her. “You’re strong, you’re going to make it. You’re going to be fine.”

Margaret looks up at him with sad blue eyes. She already knows. “My little boy,” she whispers, squeezing his hand with fingers that can barely hold his. “My baby. I love you.”

After Margaret dies, Richard lies down on the floor and cries until he has no tears left, cries until his eyes are swollen and red. He cannot get off the floor. The doctor covers Margaret with a sheet and has her body taken away for burial and still Richard cannot get off of the floor. His mama. His mama is dead. The Cartmels are dead. All their mission friends are dead. He is thirteen years old and he has no one. In his hand Richard holds the rouge locket that he gave Margaret for Christmas all those years ago, which he took off of her while she was sick. He puts the chain around his neck and tucks it under his shirt.

Help arrives from other Europeans, who take charge of the mission and arrange for the bodies to be buried. Margaret is laid to rest near the Cartmels in the local Christian cemetery; they even give her a little headstone with her name and dates on it. _Margaret O’Connell, March 14, 1875-September 21, 1907. Beloved mother._

Richard does not cry during the funeral. He stares with hot, dry eyes at the casket being lowered into the ground. The sun is bright in the blue sky; there are palm trees and flowers growing around the edges of the graveyard. It is beautiful here and he cannot imagine why. How can anything be beautiful when his mama is dead? 

“What do we do with the boy?” someone asks, and Richard is afraid. 

_Cairo, 1907-1909_

They put him in the mission orphanage. Richard is not consulted about it, merely informed. He packs his suitcase under the watchful eye of an English missionary lady. She doesn’t let him take any of his mother’s things; they are to go to the poor and needy. Richard sneaks an embroidered handkerchief into his pocket when she isn’t looking. At least he has Margaret’s rouge locket under his shirt. He’ll die before he lets anyone take it. 

The orphanage is crowded and noisy and violent, housed in a rickety old building near the river. The beds are hard, the blankets scratch, and there are no pillows. There are no books either, except for bibles and a couple of worn illustrated catechism books. No one reads to the orphans. The kids are expected to work all day in the laundry or the orphanage garden, or else make rosaries and missals to sell to fund the mission. The food is terrible. For a while Richard cannot eat; he grows thin and pale with grief. The protestant nuns who run the place say that he is wasteful and hit him. Richard has never been hit before; even when she was angry with him, Margaret never spanked or smacked. He eats his food after that. 

No one calls him Richard anymore. He becomes O’Connell, treated as an adult simply because he is tall and strong. No one sees him as the grieving, mother-sick child he is. He misses Margaret so much that it is a constant ache. No one cares. 

For two long, miserable years, Richard is an inmate at the orphanage. He takes solace in looking after the younger kids. He tells them stories at night, remembering the books Margaret read to him: stories of Phileas Fogg and Tom Sawyer and Sherlock Holmes. _Someday I will read again,_ he promises himself. _Someday I’ll get out of here._

When he is fifteen, the headmaster catches a glimpse of the chain around Richard’s neck and demands to know what he is hiding. Richard resists, knowing what will happen if he produces Margaret’s locket. He has been good at hiding it all this time, keeping it under his shirt where no one can see. The headmaster insists and smacks Richard across the face, calls him a thief. He demands Richard hand over the little piece of jewelry.

“No,” Richard says, holding the locket tight in his hand. “It belonged to my mother. I gave it to her. It’s mine.”

“You are an orphan,” the headmaster replies. “You have no right to property.”

He goes to beat Richard further and take the locket, but Richard gives him no chance. He is strong now from years of handling wet laundry and wrangling smaller kids. He belts the headmaster across the face, knocking him flat. The man’s nose is bleeding and he is screeching, and the nuns come running, but Richard is gone by the time they arrive. He takes off out the door into the street and runs. He doesn’t think about where he is going to go or what he is going to do. He’s done with the orphanage and it's brutal concept of Christian charity. He takes off into Cairo and doesn’t look back. 

_Cairo, 1909_

It turns out that if you go to a mosque and ask to do chores in return for a place to spend the night, well, they’re pretty good about that. Richard’s Arabic has become fluent over the years and the Imam, though puzzled to see a white American boy at his door, gives him soup and bread and coffee, and lets him sweep out the prayer hall. Though invited, Richard does not join them for Friday prayers, but sits to one side observing, his knees drawn up to his chest, his shoes nearby with the other men’s. He does not think. If he thinks, he will break down, and Richard has cried enough.

“Where is your family?” the Imam asks later, as he shows Richard to a small room where he can spend the night. 

“Dead,” Richard says, helpless. “My mother.” He swallows. “She was the only family I ever had, and she got sick and died, and I am all alone and I don’t know what to do.” The words spill out of him, hot and corrosive. He is perilously close to tears. 

“Ah.” The Imam gives him a blanket. By Egyptian standards, the youth before him is a man, but he knows that the white men see things differently. “May Allah shower blessings upon her grave, and may he give you the fortitude to bear this great loss.”

Richard does cry then, and the Imam lets him. He listens while Richard tells him about the mission home, and the sickness, and the orphanage, and how he left, escaped, that morning. 

“I’m not going back,” he says, wiping his eyes. “I’m never going back there.”

“No,” the Imam agrees. “You must make your own way now.”

He gives Richard a couple of names; men he knows who own businesses who perhaps could use the help of a strong young man. And so Richard begins to live and work in and around Old Cairo. He takes a job in a coffee house, first cleaning up the kitchen, then helping to make bread and brew coffee and, eventually, serving the customers. He lives in a tiny room in a cheap boarding house and works twelve hour days, first at the coffee house, then making deliveries for various antiquities dealers, then as a cook in a cheap restaurant. Working all day is exhausting; it doesn’t allow him time to think, and that is exactly what Richard needs. If he doesn’t think, he cannot feel, and Richard is so tired of feeling. 

Author's Note: This story grew out of my need to know more about Rick's life before The Mummy, seeing as he's kind of an enigma: a big, tall action man who defers to the heroine, who is strong and badass and yet kind. I wanted to know more about that, so here we are! I hope you like it. Thanks for reading and please let me know what you think in the comments! 


	2. Part Two: Youth

**Part Two: Youth**

_Cairo 1910_

Richard meets Tom Powell while working as a clerk in a European tobacconist’s shop in Garden City. Tom is a regular customer, coming in for French cigarettes and English newspapers and Spanish brandy. He is tall and dapper in an insouciant, devil-may-care kind of way, and Richard wonders what it must be like to be that kind of man, to wear nice clothes and have money for things like booze and cigarettes. Tom talks to him, makes him laugh. One day he pauses and looks Richard over. 

“So what are you doing out here, kid? You come to Egypt looking for adventure?”

“Yeah, something like that,” Richard says, unwilling to get into his history at the mission. He would rather forget it. The loss of his mother is not as raw as it was, but it still hurts. 

Tom Powell looks him over. “What’s your name?”

“Richard O’Connell.”

“How old are you, Rick?”

Rick--that’s a new idea.

“Seventeen, sir.”

“And what to you want to do with yourself?”

It’s the first time anyone has asked him the question. Richard--Rick--considers it. “I don’t know. Mostly I just survive."

Powell considers him; Rick fidgets a little under his gaze. But Powell only offers an invitation to meet for drinks at a bar down the street when Rick gets off work. Richard--Rick--accepts the invitation, and finds himself with a new friend. 

_Cairo, 1910-1912_

Powell takes Rick under his wing. When he looks at young Rick O’Connell, he sees a strapping boy on the edge of manhood, but he also sees sadness, and fatigue, and longing. It doesn’t take Powell long to learn that Rick has no one. That decides it for him. A kid like that, becoming a man in this world without anyone to guide his way--it’s amazing that he hasn’t already been consumed by the underworld. Rick has strength of character, and Powell has time and interest. The kid deserves a friend. 

For his part, Rick is glad to have Tom in his life. Tom is suave and debonair, but he’s also genuine. Rick is the sum of all his experiences; he knows how to tell if a person is operating with ulterior motives. They go out together some evenings after Rick gets off of work, to European bars and clubs, to the tourist hot spots. Rick isn’t sure, at first, that he’s allowed into any of these places: there is a firm line between the wealthy tourists who spend the winter season in Egypt and the native inhabitants of the land, and though Rick is a white American, he is also a dirt-poor orphan more comfortable watching from afar than participating. But Tom is adamant: there is no reason that Rick shouldn’t have fun. 

“When was the last time you really had a good laugh?” he asks, and for the life of him, Rick can’t remember. 

So when Tom lends him a suit and nice shoes and takes him out dancing at Shepheard’s, Rick doesn’t protest. He isn’t much good at dancing, but he is young, and in the borrowed clothing he certainly looks the part of a young tourist enjoying himself abroad. It turns out that dancing isn’t that hard: he watches, and he participates, and in no time at all Rick can waltz and polka with the best of European society. He plays up his American accent, co-opting the crisp laziness of Tom’s vowels and attempting to mimic the voices of the rich people whose shoes he had polished back in Chicago. And it _is_ fun to dress up and go out. Rick has merely existed for so long that he takes to socializing like a man dying of thirst. Tom Powell shows him what it’s like to be a gentleman: how to dress, how to walk with confidence, how to play cards and hold your liquor (“If you don’t want to get drunk, then don’t, but there’s no harm in a drink”). 

Tom also, on the night of Rick’s eighteenth birthday, introduces him to Layla. She’s older than him, a woman both elegant and worldly, who bends close to Rick and asks if he would like to learn what she knows. Rick, realizing her meaning, goes scarlet to the roots of his hair. Layla laughs and kisses his cheek and sashays away, and Rick turns to Tom in something of a panic. Of course he knows about women, and what goes on between couples, and of course he wants to know--of course he has urges--but isn’t it--isn’t it...wrong?

“Look,” Powell says, leaning forward, “here’s some advice. If a woman wants you and you’re both comfortable with it, there’s nothing wrong with having a good time. If you don’t want it, don’t do it. And if she doesn’t want it, definitely don’t do it. But if you both do, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying yourselves.”

Rick looks over at Layla, leaning on the bar with a cocktail glass in one hand, watching him. He looks back at Tom. 

“You’ve got to learn sometime,” Tom says easily. “Better to get lucky with someone who knows what they’re doing than not. Layla knows her business. Treat her with respect and she’ll teach you everything she knows.”

Rick glances at Layla again; she smiles. She smelled of some musky perfume when she bent over him and her cheek was warm and smooth against his. His heart wants to jump out of his chest. 

“I, uh, I think I want to,” he says. 

Tom smiles. “Well, then go on.” Rick stands, and he catches his arm. “One last thing: when you lie with a woman, be generous. This isn’t solitaire; you’ve got a partner in this game.”

“Okay,” Rick says, and walks on unsteady feet towards the bar. Layla cocks her head at him. 

“Buy me a drink, lovely,” she says, taking his arm. 

They spend the rest of the night together; Rick proves to be a very apt pupil--and generous indeed. 

_Cairo 1912_

“A guy I know in Morocco, he’s looking for someone to help with his business. He’s an antiquities dealer; has connections all over North Africa. He wants someone young and smart, who can be in charge of sourcing and shipping pieces. I recommended you.”

“Is it legal?” asks Rick, who has lived in Egypt long enough to acquaint himself with the vagaries of the antiquities business. 

“Yeah, it’s all above board,” Tom says, and then grins a little. “As much as these things can be, anyway. Don’t worry, you won’t be hurting anybody.”

Rick considers it. He has been in Cairo for five long years and would like to travel and see the world. He has a little money saved from his jobs and it would be nice to see Morocco. He writes to Tom’s friend about the job and soon enough receives a ticket aboard a small steam ship from Alexandria to the port city of Tangier; from there he will take the train to Marrakesh. Rick packs his single suitcase with all of his belongings; he doesn’t have many clothes, but what he does have are well-maintained. He takes the train with Tom up to Alexandria. They part company on the docks, Tom to take the steamer to England and then America, Rick on a different ship to Morocco. 

“Behave yourself,” Tom says lightly, adjusting Rick’s tie. “Remember to open a bank account and always have something in it. Remember to dress well and be a gent to everyone you meet. And remember--this one’s important--remember to have a _good time_. You’re a hard worker and you have a good head on your shoulders. Remember that all work and no play makes Rick a dull boy.”

Rick smiles and embraces his friend. He knows it’s unlikely that he’ll see Tom again, but...maybe someday.

“Thanks for,” he says, but hesitates, searching for the right words. “Everything. Thanks for everything.”

The older man laughs, gives him another quick hug, and sends him off. 

Later, in his tiny cabin, Rick finds a monogrammed cigarette case containing some money in his pocket: Tom’s parting gift. He grins, then goes up on deck to explore. He does not look back at Egypt’s coastline fading behind him, but stares out into the sea, one hand holding the locket under his shirt, the other toying with the cigarette case in his pocket. Finally, Rick is ready for his own adventure. 

_Morocco 1912-1914_

Morocco is different from Egypt in many ways, not least because for the first time Rick is making more than enough money to live, and live nicely. He takes a tiny apartment in the Jewish Quarter and spends his free time learning French and wandering the city, taking in the sites. The work he does is interesting: traveling about the city and, eventually, the countryside evaluating art and antiques for the European market. He learns first the basics and then the minutiae of Western and Arabic art history; his employers keep a small but fine library of scholarly books on the subject, and Rick studies them as often as possible. 

Within six months Rick can spot a forgery; within a year he can put a name and an era to an artifact. It’s often exciting business: he makes friends with the men who transport the pieces and oftentimes accompanies a sale as far as the port cities of Tangier or Agadir or Casablanca. Rick is handsome and charming, and he is good at talking with people; by the summer of 1914, he has sources all over North Africa who are happy to provide him with information and good prices. It’s like treasure hunting, in a way, and he makes sure that the people who sell to him get a good cut of the money, so that they always come to him first when a good piece hits the market. 

He continues to live frugally, as Margaret taught him, maintaining the tiny flat in the Mellah, cooking his own meals, looking after his clothing. He gets on well with his neighbors and goes out dancing in the European clubs and bars; he takes out a subscription to a tiny English library; he socializes and has good times. It’s a happy time, a whole other world from the life he led in Egypt. He spends his twentieth birthday with a couple of guys from work out at a nightclub, flirting with women and generally enjoying himself. Life is good and the future is bright. 

And then, in late summer of 1914, the entire world goes to war.

Author's Note: Finally, at long last, here is the second installment! I've got one more planned, detailing Rick's time at War and afterwards, so keep an eye out for that. I hope you like it! Please leave me a comment and let me know! And as always, thanks for reading. :-)


	3. Part Three: War

**Note: This chapter contains graphic depictions of war. Proceed with caution.**

**Part Three: War**

_Marrakech, 1914_

Nobody saw the war coming--at least, nobody that Rick knows anticipated it. They’re all quick to join up, though, the English guys rushing off to their embassy and the Frenchmen rushing off to various government buildings. Rick waits. He is in a strange situation. His American passport expired years ago and anyway he doesn’t have it: it was something the orphanage kept after Margaret died. In Egypt he had never needed papers, but Morocco is different. He has what he needs to get around--a _carte d'identité_ with his name and birthdate, provided by his bosses at the antiquities company--but he doubts it would be enough to get him onto a ship going anywhere at the moment. And so Rick cools his heels in Marrakech, working during the day and spending the evening drinking pastis and reading European newspapers in coffee shops that teem with rumor and the lust for battle. 

One day in mid-December when Rick arrives at the office, he finds the door open and the place teeming with gendarmes. His superiors are gone; so are the secretaries. Rick is surrounded by shouting men, arrested, and taken, yelling his head off, to the local jail. Hours later, he is hauled before a magistrate. 

“The men you work for--where are they?”

“I have no idea,” Rick snaps. “You want to tell me what the hell is going on?”

The official, a Monsieur Baratte, ignores the question and continues the interrogation. Slowly, Rick pieces together what happened and feels his heart sink to his toes. 

The antiquities company he has worked for for two years was a front for a group of art thieves. They had used Rick to present a facade of honesty: all of the sourcing and buying he had done was genuine, so that the bosses could hide behind it. No, Rick had had no idea. No, he has no idea where the bastards are now. Yes, he really is an American citizen, thank you very much. 

“But you have no papers,” Monsieur Baratte says, eyes full of malice. “And you freely admit to working for Sethos and his men.”

Rick stares at him, helpless with rage and fear. “Can I get a lawyer? I want a lawyer.”

He spends the night in jail. 

The next day he is brought back before Monsieur Baratte. Rick has not really slept--the prison is hot and loud, and he is a mess of anxiety and outrage--and he glares balefully at the man, trying to maintain an air of injured dignity despite rumpled clothes and a day’s growth of beard. Baratte gestures, mockingly, for him to take a seat. 

“Well, Monsieur O’Connell, if that is really your name,” he says, “we have reached a decision, a choice which I will leave in your hands. Either you can go to prison for a very long time, or-” He pauses to pour himself coffee from a silver pot. Rick hasn’t eaten since breakfast yesterday and the scent turns his stomach. Baratte stirs in sugar and looks at him again. “--or you can join the Foreign Legion and fight for France in the war.”

Rick stares at him, helpless, clenching his fists. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

Baratte shrugs. “You have been working for known criminals for almost two years. You have no papers and no proof but your word that you are innocent, and--if I have failed to make myself clear-- _I don’t believe you._ We are at war, Monsieur O’Connell. It would be a very long time to wait in prison for a trial; you could be there for years. What will it be then? Prison or the Legion?”

A couple of gendarmes accompany Rick back to his tiny apartment in the Mellah, keeping him in handcuffs in case he tries to make a break for it. They stand watch while he packs his single suitcase with his clothes and shaving tackle. On the way out of the building, they pass a couple of Rick’s neighbors, who stand staring. 

“There’s fresh food in my icebox,” he says loudly. “I won’t be coming back, so it would be a shame if it went to waste.”

The gendarmes drive Rick to a fort outside the city and leave him in the charge of the commanding officer of the 26th Regiment of the French Foreign Legion. Rick has only the clothes on his back, the bag in his hand, and his mother’s locket around his neck. Everything he has worked for over the past two years is gone, vanished like it never was. He is so angry he could kill someone.

Shock begins to give way to fury he is issued a uniform, a gun, and a bunk. Rick is twenty years old and wrongfully accused, and now he is going to war. 

_Morocco, 1915_

For a long time, the only emotion Rick is capable of is rage. His life and career have been stolen from him; he has been betrayed in the worst way. His anger is a shroud that covers him and threatens to drown him. He tries to suppress it, to channel it into the training he is receiving, tries not to let it consume him. 

The only way out is through. Every day at five a.m. the reveiller awakens Rick’s barracks. In the dark they wash and dress and march out for roll call. The physical training is intense: drilling, marching, marksmanship, swordplay. But it isn’t prison. There is some freedom, and there is camaraderie, and slowly, cautiously, Rick makes friends and almost--almost--begins to forgive and enjoy himself. Not the fighting--he doesn’t give a damn about that--but he finds that he likes the order of army life. There’s a rhythm and etiquette to it that he finds almost hypnotic. It’s weird to find that he’s a really good shot with a rifle, with a saber, with hand-to-hand combat. In the orphanage and the mean streets of Cairo you had to be scrappy to survive, but this is a genuine talent, and he is quietly proud of it. 

The uniform isn’t half bad, either, and it attracts the girls. Whenever they have a free night, Rick never has a problem finding a willing partner to dance--and occasionally more--with. But even as he begins to feel cautious optimism in the future, marching orders are announced: the 26th Regiment is to sail from Tangier, first to Alexandria and then on to the eastern Mediterranean, to a place in Turkey called Gelibolu. 

_Gallipoli, 1915-1916_

Later, Rick will come to believe that the Gallipoli Campaign might have succeeded if it had been launched three months earlier, before the Allies lost the element of surprise. The idea is simple: take the peninsula and hold it as a kind of back door to meet up with the Russians and surround Germany. As it is, the Turks are ready and waiting for them, and the Foreign Legion and the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps become target practice while they’re still rowing ashore. 

Rick is in a row boat with six other guys, almost to shore, when the machine guns start. Within seconds, half of them are dead or dying. Behind them the Navy battleships open fire, shells blasting over the water. Rick hunkers down and goes forward: the only way he can go. The beach is strewn with bodies, the hot sand red with blood, the pretty blue waves tinged with pink. The guy just in front of Rick has his head blown off, clean as a whistle. Rick screams, but he cannot hear himself in the cacophony of shells and machine guns and dying men. 

Ultimately, Rick finds himself halfway up the mountain, dug into a trench with a couple of Legionnaires and a couple of Anzacs. Occasionally they advance, occasionally they retreat; mostly they kill and are killed. 

Rick knows now that he will not live through the War, that he will never marry or have a family or grow old. Every morning he wakes up from his last full night’s sleep, drinks his last cup of coffee, eats his last breakfast, and prepares himself for his last battle. Every moment is his last: a last glimpse of hot blue sky, a last joke with the men, a last lungful of hot, putrid air. That volley of machine gun fire will surely be the last thing he hears; that was the last man he will ever kill. This will be his last promotion (they happen a lot when all anyone can do is die); these will be the last bodies he ever buries. This will be the last time he wraps his dirty blanket around himself; it will be the last time he falls asleep. And every day, Rick wakes up one last time to begin the cycle again. 

Whenever they can, the guys around him write letters home. Rick has no one to write to, no home to go back to. When he closes his eyes, though, he can see Home: the little Chicago apartment he and Margaret lived in before they went to Egypt, shabby but full of warmth and safety. Rick misses his mother now almost more than he ever has. When the stench of dead and bloated bodies, the _tat-tat-tat_ of machine gun fire, the screams of the wounded become too much, Rick consoles himself with the thought that he will see Margaret any minute now. He wonders if she’ll recognize him beneath the dirt and the blood and the lice. 

Eventually Rick begins to write his mother letters, if only to get the thoughts out of his head. 

_Dear Mom, I’m scared. I’m so scared. All my commanding officers are dead; most of my regiment, too._

_Dear Mom, an Anzac guy got his legs blown off, stuck out between trenches, and the rats were starting to go at him and he wasn’t even dead yet. So I killed him. It was better than getting eaten alive._

_Dear Mom, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I do horrible things every second of every day and I’m so, so sorry. I’ll see you soon._

Rick burns the letters after writing them. He doesn’t want anyone trying to mail them when they go through his things after he’s killed. 

But he isn’t killed. Bullets seem to bounce off of him or change course before they hit him and for the life of him, Rick can’t explain it. He becomes the guy everyone wants with them on a charge; they call him Ricochet and keep close to his heels. Consequently, Rick also becomes the guy to drag the wounded back to their trench, the guy holding the hands of the dying as they breathe their last. He is good at commanding the men. They trust him because he is right there, leading the charge, and because he looks after them in between skirmishes the way he looked after the kids at the orphanage, back when that was the worst thing that ever happened to him, telling them bad jokes and funny stories and telling them to get some sleep. He is twenty-one years old. 

At last, after nearly eleven months dug into the mountains, the Allies retreat, leaving behind grenades and water-powered rifles to confound the Turks. In the aftermath, Rick finds himself on a Navy hospital ship with the ragged remains of his regiment. He stands staring at the cleanliness and order until a nurse takes the rifle from his hand and leads him to the improvised showers on the port side. There, a couple of medics strip Rick to his bare skin and scour him with strong soap. They shave his head and beard to free him from the trench lice and send his ruined uniform to be incinerated. All he has left are his dog tags and Margaret’s locket, which he holds onto, wild-eyed. Rick is red all over from louse bites; they rub him down with calamine lotion and give him new clothes to wear, and he stands outside himself watching this kid who looks so young and so old mechanically dressing himself in soft clean underwear and pants and shirt. _Someone help him,_ Rick thinks, and then he is himself again, holding a pair of brand new socks-- _new, clean, socks!_ \--in his hands and weeping. 

A nurse all in gleaming white appears at Rick’s side, takes his hand and squeezes it. 

“Come on, soldier,” she says, softly, gently, and leads Rick deeper into the ship, to a cot made up with fresh white sheets and dark green blankets. She pushes Rick down into the bed and folds the blankets up around him; he curls in, knees to his chest, and when he wakes up fourteen hours later, they are on their way to Egypt.

Author's Note: this one was a doozy to write, and horrible, but I'm quite proud of it. I can't say I hope you enjoy it, but I hope you find it well-written and interesting. Thank you for reading and please let me know what you think in the comments! Also, if you want to see a picture of pre-Gallipoli Rick, [just pop over here and have a look](https://tinydooms.tumblr.com/post/627376890695581696). 


	4. Part Four: Aftermath

**Part Four: Aftermath**

_North Africa, 1916-1919_

After Gallipoli, the remains of Rick’s regiment rest in an Alexandria hospital for a couple of weeks before being reabsorbed into the Legion. The time off is healing for Rick: he is not injured, just malnourished and exhausted, and he spends his time sleeping and eating. Bread with real butter. Chicken stew with fresh vegetables. Roast beef sandwiches. Gallons of hot tea. It can’t continue; the War is still raging and soon they will return to battle and soon Rick will die. But it’s good while it lasts. Rick eats and sleeps, and when the time comes to return to the War, he has made his peace. 

The Legion goes wherever it is needed. Algeria, Tunisia, Palestine, the Western Front. Rick exists in a kind of shell, all hope for the future behind him. There is only now, and now, and now, battle and sleep and battle and sleep. Men die all around him, constantly, a ceaseless parade of death. Some are killed so quickly they never knew what hit them. Some die slowly, gruesomely, missing limbs or coughing up their lungs or burning with trench fever. None of them are older than he is now. Rick has just, inexplicably, unbelievably, turned twenty-four. 

And then the War is over, and the peace accords are signed, and Rick is still alive. 

He sits to one side on Armistice Day, watching his comrades celebrate. There are no words to describe what he feels. Disbelief comes close. How is it possible that after the horror of Gallipoli, of Flanders, of North Africa, that the War can simply be _over_?

The men around him are boisterous, laughing with joy and relief, drinks in hand, records playing on the barracks gramophone. Rick sits with drink in hand, watching, unable to feel anything. 

“We can go home, O’Connell!” someone shouts and Rick plasters on a smile and toasts him. 

_Home._ Where is home?

In the end, Rick stays with the Legion. It’s easier than striking out on his own, easier to continue living one moment to the next than to try to piece together some kind of life. There is always work for an army to do and he is a familiar member of the regiment. _Good old Ricochet_. Rick hates the name, the title. What good is a man who survives when he has nothing and no one to live for? He should have died. So many others had families, sweethearts, lives to return to, and he has nothing, and why is it that he lives when they do not? How is that fair? What is the point of him?

And so Rick stays with the Legion and exists. Barely. 

_Hamunaptra, 1919_

On a balmy late May evening, Colonel Guizot calls his regiment to order. He has found a map, he tells them, leading them to the Lost City of Hamunaptra in Egypt. Do they not know the story of Hamunaptra? Rick sits to one side, shaking his head, as Guizot tells the men about Seti’s necropolis out in the desert. Hamunaptra is a myth, a fairy tale; everyone knows that. Rick remembers hearing about it as a kid back in Cairo: the City of the Dead where Seti and his family were buried, far from the Valley of the Kings and with the wealth of Egypt sealed inside their tombs--

“--just there for the taking!” Guizot exclaims. 

_Bullshit,_ Rick thinks. If there ever was anything at Hamunaptra, if it even existed, it was probably robbed empty in antiquity. He thinks of all of the artifacts that passed through his hands in his former life in Marrakech, objects that were one, two, three thousand years old. People are always going to be people, dishonest, selfish, warring. There _is_ no undisturbed city of the dead just waiting to be plundered. Guizot is an idiot for believing it. 

And so is the rest of the 26th Regiment, because as almost one man they agree to march out with Guizot and despoil the place. The men, egged on by a wily little Hungarian called Beni Gabor, dream aloud of gold and riches and adventure. 

_Well, hell. Why not?_ Rick is almost at the end of his commission; come July he will either re-enlist or be dead. Why not have one last hurrah? They aren’t going to find anything, but it’ll be nice to see Egypt again. 

_You damn fool, O’Connell,_ he thinks five weeks later, surveying the horde about to descend upon them. 

They have only been at Hamunaptra two days, and both of those days were spent preparing for this fight. The Tuareg tribes have maneuvered them into position ruthlessly and effectively, pursuing them across the desert for nearly two weeks. They have always been far enough away to avoid contact, close enough to cut off any chance of escape. Just why the Tuaregs have chosen to pick this fight is anyone’s guess, but the odds are bad: the garrison is outnumbered easily four to one. 

Well, they’ve found Hamunaptra, at least. Guizot has that going for him, if nothing else. Even Rick is impressed by the ruined city: the remains of pillars and carven walls rising into the air, the doorways leading to underground passages, the worn and weathered statues of animal headed gods looming out of the sand. But there is something else here that isn’t quite right. It feels like they are being watched, listened to; the air at night hums with anguished whispers from voices that cannot be there. And it’s not just the fear of upcoming battle giving rise to night terrors, though it really doesn’t help to see the Tuareg campfires dotting the horizon, surrounding them. Something here gives Rick the creeps. Many of the men feel it, too; others, like Beni, don’t seem fazed. They are more angry about the lack of treasure (when any true Egyptologist would be beside themself just to be here) and the Tuaregs hunting them than any lingering creepiness. 

There isn’t any treasure to be found, though Rick did find something just that morning: a weird kind of metal box that opens if you twist it correctly. It’s engraved with symbols and really quite elegant. It’s resting in the pocket of Rick’s jacket. He hasn’t shown it to anybody; there are more important things to think about at the moment. If they live through this, he’ll trot it out as the only artifact Hamunaptra has yielded. 

Rick knows, looking out at the approaching horde, that they are not going to live through this. 

Colonel Guizot turns his horse and abandons them. Rick turns and watches him go, ice cold rage flooding him. _Oh, you fucking coward._

“You just got promoted,” says Beni, and Rick swears under his breath as he turns back to face the oncoming warriors. 

“Hold your positions!” he bawls, and the men do. Save for Beni, who drops his rifle and flees. _Typical._

The battle goes even worse than Rick had feared. It’s a massacre almost as bad as any he has ever seen, the Tuaregs gunning down the Legionnaires, riding their horses through the ranks, hacking and stabbing with their curved swords. Rick retreats, losing first his rifle, then his pistols. The riders pursue him through the ruined city, Rick fleeing as fast as he can run. Ahead of him he sees Beni dive through a doorway and yells for him to wait. 

Beni does not wait. 

Cursing, Rick runs deeper into the city, diving over and around walls, dodging bullets. It is every man for himself now; none of them are going to survive this. At last, he stops against a stone wall, resigned. There is nowhere else to run. 

Rick turns and faces the armed riders and closes his eyes as they take aim at him. He hopes their aim will be true. Now that the moment is finally here, he is grateful to not be afraid. 

But the armed men begin to cry out, terror in their voices. They turn their wailing horses, falling over themselves in their effort to ride away, and charge back the way they came, out into the desert. Silence falls, so heavy his ears ring with it. Rick opens his eyes. 

The men who pursued him are gone. The sound of battle has died with the 26th Regiment. He is all alone in this desolate place. Rick stares around him, so astonished he can hardly breathe. How is this possible? 

It’s then that he hears something then: the whispers that have plagued the regiment the last few nights. There is no other sound but the wind passing around the ruins. Rick looks around. 

The wall he had stopped before is not a wall, but a massive stone statue. Anubis, Rick thinks, backing up to look at it. The whispers seem to scurry around him, mean little whispers of rage and hatred, and then the sand explodes upward as though being sucked into the earth. Something writhes under the sand, chases him around the base of the statue. Rick yelps and jumps away, stumbling into furrows created by the unseen monster. Something is screaming deep underground, desperate to get out. _The hell with this,_ Rick thinks, scrambling away. He hears a roar behind him as he runs back towards the outskirts of the city, but he does not look back. Whatever it is, he doesn’t want to know. 

Instead, he makes his way through his fallen comrades, looking for survivors. The Tuaregs have done their work well; Rick does not find a single man alive. They even got Guizot; the colonel is dead just outside the western wall with the treasure map in his hand. Rick takes it from him, studies it. It shows a road through the desert to the Nile. Rick folds it up and sticks it in his pocket. Time to go. 

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs as he walks through the ranks of dead men out towards the desert. “I’m sorry, guys. I’m so sorry.”

As he strikes out east across the salt flat before the city, a shiver runs down Rick’s back, as though he is being watched. He looks around and up, up to a group of horsemen watching from the cliffs. Somehow he knows that they will not help him. And so Rick sets off into the desert, Hamunaptra and his lost regiment at his back. Two hundred men are dead and only “good old Ricochet” has survived. Rick stumbles into the desert and hates himself. 

_The Western Desert, 1919_

It takes Rick four days to reach civilization following the route sketched out on the ancient map. He heads due west, wrapping his scarf around his head and neck for protection from the sun, rationing his water and refilling his canteen whenever he comes upon a little oasis, a string of which lie in his path. Still, it is high summer in Egypt and filthy hot, and even with a canteen Rick is dizzy with heatstroke by the third day. 

Still, he puts one dogged foot in front of the other, pushing himself closer and closer towards cultivated land and help. And help does arrive on the third day, in the form of a caravan heading northeast to Cairo. 

The caravan leaders are reasonably wary of the filthy, sick Foreign Legion officer stumbling across the sands towards them, but they give Rick water and food and a little donkey to ride, and he bobs along after them. It makes almost no difference; the donkey is so little that Rick’s feet almost drag along the sandy road. But it saves him having to walk, which is a mercy. Something is wrong, terribly wrong. His chest feels swampy, his head is swimming; he flashes alternately icy cold and boiling hot with fever. This is more than sunstroke. Rick knows these symptoms, as they have been sweeping the world. Influenza. 

He hangs farther and farther back from the caravan, scarf wrapped around his mouth and nose, unwilling to infect his rescuers. Eventually they leave him behind. Rick stops paying attention to his surroundings as the fever progresses. He gives the little donkey its head and lets it go wherever it wants. Eventually it stops outside a gate of some sort. Rick registers a cluster of Western-type buildings beyond it before he slides off the donkey’s back and lies insensible in the dusty road. 

So this is how it feels to die of the flu. _Oh, Mama. Oh, Mama._ Rick lies in the dirt, mostly unconscious, unaware of the excitement his appearance has caused. From far away he hears voices chattering, exclaiming, in Arabic, and then a strident English voice brays out. 

“Good lord, what’s all this, then? Look lively, soldier.” Hands touch Rick’s face and neck; through bleary eyes he sees a man with fleshy features and a walrus mustache bending over him. “Still alive, ahaha! Well, you’ve made it this far; suppose we should keep it that way. Issa! Abdul! Bring a stretcher!”

They carry him inside and put him to bed. For days Rick sweats and burns with fever, coughing and hacking and puking. He doesn’t know where he is, who he is; there is only pain and misery and the overwhelming longing for it all to be over. Sometimes he is back at Gallipoli, charging the beach and watching the man in front of him getting his head blown off or being chased by hungry rats the size of small dogs. They nibble at his fingers and toes and Rick shrieks and tries to beat them away and winds his sheets around himself. Sometimes the strident English voice breaks through the nightmares; sometimes strong hands force water or broth down his throat. At last, everything fades and Rick sinks down into darkness, and Winston Havelock watches over his patient, wondering if this lad who seems to have survived so much will choose to stay or to go. Winston can only watch and wait. 

_Between, 1919_

Rick is lying in a garden, pale pink and white roses blooming all around him. It is quiet here, comfortable, the balmy air laden with the scent of flowers and the hum of bees. The grass under his back is soft, springy. He does not hurt. If he focuses on his body, Rick can feel a faraway ache in his chest, as though he has not quite shaken off his life. He lets his mind wander. He’s never seen anywhere so beautiful. 

Soft steps on the path nearby. Rick pushes himself up to see who it is. 

Margaret is there, her lopsided smile mirroring his own. “Hello, Richard.”

“Oh, _Mom.”_

They cling to each other for a long time. He is bigger than her now, taller, and Margaret has to stretch to hug him. She smoothes her hands over his face and kisses his cheeks and Rick stares and stares, smiling. He had almost forgotten her face. 

“Am I dead?” he asks.

“No,” Margaret replies, “you are Between. You’re not going to die just yet. They’ve let me come to see you and send you back.”

Disappointment floods Rick. He does not want to leave this beautiful place, does not want to leave his mother. Margaret puts her arms around him again, draws him down to sit with her in the grass, among the flowers. 

“I know it’s hard,” she says, rubbing Rick’s back. “I got all your letters-”

“You _did?”_

“Yes, of course. I’m sorry it’s been so awful, honey, but it’s going to get better. I promise you, it’s going to get better.”

Rick passes his hands over his face, wipes his eyes. “I can’t see it.”

“I know.” Margaret squeezes his hand. “My darling boy.”

“I missed you, Mom.”

“I missed you, too.”

“I don’t want to go back.”

“Well, you’re going to.” Her tone brooks no argument. “You’ve got so much joy in store for you, Richard. Trust me.”

“Can I stay just a little longer? I don’t want to be alone anymore.”

Margaret hugs him again, draws his head down to rest on her knee, strokes his hair like he’s a little kid again. Rick closes his eyes, content to just be here. He doesn’t want to leave, though he can feel the ache in his chest getting stronger, the softness of the garden and the safety of his mother’s hands fading. He clings to it. Just a little longer. 

Hands smack together just in front of his face. Rick jumps and opens his eyes. A fair-haired child is standing over him, looking at him in amused consternation. 

“Are you still here?” he says. _“Wake up!”_

_The No. 9 Auxiliary Airfield, 1919_

Rick opens his eyes. He is lying in bed in a med bay, a blanket covering him to the shoulders. There is no noise, no tumult, just a muted sound of kids playing outside and the hum of a ceiling fan turning in lazy circles above his bed. Rick turns his head. It’s a big room, but his is the only occupied bed. It’s military, this med bay; functional and beautiful in the austere way of hospitals. Military, but not Foreign Legion. No. No more of that. 

He’s been sick, real sick, that much Rick can remember. Everything after meeting up with the caravan is a blur. He knows he dreamed of Margaret, and that it was important, but he can’t remember the details. Rick swallows around his suddenly tight throat. He wants to go home, wherever that is. 

A door at the end of the ward opens; a tall, thick-set man ambles through, holding a cup of tea in one hand and a newspaper in the other. He doesn’t see Rick staring at him until he is almost at his bedside. 

“Ah, so you’re awake, young man,” he says, and laughs a round laugh. “Very good, very good. It was touch and go there for a while, but you’ve pulled through admirably. We’ll have you back on your feet yet!”

“Who are you?” Rick says, his voice a croak. He feels very small and very weak, and a little alarmed in the face of this man’s ebullience. “Where am I?”

“You are at the Number Nine Auxiliary Airfield in Giza. I am Captain Winston Havelock, at your service, sir.” And he salutes, smartly. “No need to tell me who you are, Richard O’Connell.”

He indicates the little table at the side of Rick’s bed, where lie that weird little puzzle box he found at Hamunaptra, Rick’s dog tags, and Margaret’s rouge locket--scuffed and worn now, but no less precious for it. Rick tries to reach for it, but cannot lift his arm for long enough. Winston scoops the necklace up and hands it to him. 

“From a sweetheart, eh?” he says.

“No,” Rick whispers and lets his eyes drift shut.

He sleeps for a long time, a deep, restoring sleep. Almost against his will, Rick gets better. Winston is loud and overly jovial, but he is a good nurse and does not let his patient relapse. Eventually Rick tells him everything about what happened to his regiment out in the Western Desert. Winston nods, his face serious and sad. 

“All mine are gone, too,” he says, passing a hand over his face. “All of the other men went down in a blaze of flame and glory, and I’ve been sitting here rotting of boredom and booze ever since.”

Rick warms to him, grasps his hand in solidarity. Here is someone who understands. 

Winston turns out to be more of a godsend than Rick had ever imagined possible. Rick is quarantined in the medbay--the influenza pandemic hasn’t hit Egypt as badly as it could, but they are taking no chances--and so it is Winston who sees to the administrative side of things, caballing the Foreign Legion in Morocco about the loss of the 26th Regiment, writing to the American Embassy in Cairo about getting Rick’s papers in order, arranging a loan of his own money to help the younger man get back on his feet once he is well enough to work. 

“You can stay on here as long as you need, O’Connell,” Winston says, gesturing expansively to the airfield in general. “Heaven knows it’s just the two of us rattling around in here.”

Rick swallows. He doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know what to do now that the War is over and his time in the army at an end. He feels as though the only thing keeping him going is not thinking about tomorrow, as if he has been juggling death for so long that if he stops now, everything will fall apart. It is not that he wants to die, but he has no idea how to be alive. 

_Cairo, 1919-1922_

Crash.

Author's Note: That's all folks! I may add an epilogue, but the next story after this one is [The Hanged Man](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23609095). I hope you like this story! Please let me know what you think in the comments, and as always, thanks for reading! 

ETA: Okay, I know I said this is the last bit, but I lied. You know, like a liar, as John Mulaney would say.


End file.
